What do you say I am?

Posted on June 6, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

Recently I have been asked if I was a minister or a teacher. This was in two different settings, but it was close enough together that I decided to start thinking about it.

In both situations I kind of hedged. I didn’t really say no, and I didn’t really say yes. I am both, in a way. I’m both at the same time, but not officially.

But what makes one official? The paperwork? A ceremony? Does training count? What kind? Or is it simply if you do the work, you are the worker?

For three years, I’ve tutored kindergartners who have learning disabilities or have English as a second language. Before that, I did the same in college for years. I’ve taught classes on various subjects in the medieval reenactment group I was in. I’ve taught classes at my old church. In all these situations, what qualifies me is that I do the work. I just know how, and I do it.

I’ve taken classes in Pastoral care, in the Circle process, and been in the discernment process to be a deacon. I’ve read many books on how to be a minister and how to bridge cultures and styles. I’ve gotten certified as a minister online so I can legally perform weddings for people who are not affiliated with a religious community. In this, what qualifies me is the training.

To me, part of being a minister or a teacher is not that I think I’m better than those that I minister to or teach. It is that I feel it is my blessing to help them remember their own power. It isn’t about “lording” over people. It is about leading them back to themselves.

My goal in both being a minister or a teacher is to help build bridges. I’m a facilitator, a translator. I find out what is preventing them from being able to fully be themselves, and I find a workaround. Perhaps there is some prayer form that they don’t know about. Perhaps they would enjoy painting more than beading. I try to find the best fit for the person.

When people ask me if I’m a minister or a teacher, perhaps I should ask them “What do you say I am?” like Jesus did. Jesus didn’t tell anybody what he was. He just did the work – with no training and no certification. He was all about just getting in there and doing it. He wasn’t ordained, and he didn’t ordain anybody. He was actually against the idea of giving over your power to authority figures.

Perhaps if people on their own are asking me if I’m a minister or a teacher, I am. If they see me that way, then I must be that way, right?

But I’m not a minister or a teacher in the way they think I am. I don’t want them to then think that I have some authority or power over them. It is the exact opposite. I’m here to help them find themselves. I’m here to help remove stumbling blocks. I’m more of a facilitator – I make it easier. In a way, I’m more like a cheerleader than a coach.

The value of women – on clothing

Posted on June 5, 2014 by betsybeadhead | 1 Comment

Our value as women is based on our relationship with other people and not on our own merits as human beings. We are seen as someone’s daughter, or mother, or wife. We are sold the idea that if we don’t get married and have a family, we are nothing as human beings.

Thus, part of our value as women is based on our ability to attract men. Part of that value is set on how we dress. We are supposed to dress in a way that is seen as attractive to other people, but especially to men.

Now, if we dress in a very modest fashion we are seen as frumpy. We perhaps even seen as being lesbians. There’s very little middle ground in what is allowed for how we dress. It is either too attractive, or not attractive enough.

But the worst part is when we dress “too attractively” and a man attacks.

Part of the mark of a well-trained dog is that you can put a snack or a treat in front of it and it doesn’t lunge for it. Perhaps that is the problem. We have men who are not well-trained. We have men who if they see a woman who is attractively dressed (which she has to be in order to be a woman in our society) they will become like dogs.

They will grope her.
They will catcall her.
They will wolf-whistle to her.
They will attack her.
They will rape her.

The problem is not how women dress. The problem is how men act. The problem is that men are acting like dogs and not like human beings. In this situation, the only thing that makes men and animals different is the training.

Now, not all men act like dogs. But enough do that women have to be mindful of themselves at all times. Enough do that we have to think about what we wear and how we wear it so that we don’t “cause” a man to attack us.

If a man is exercising self-control, a woman can be wearing anything – or nothing – and he won’t attack her.

But – women are told they have to attract a man. We have to dress attractively in order to get a wedding dress. But – if we dress too attractively, it is our fault if we get raped.

All of this is wrong. All of it.

Women are people, first and foremost, and should not be told they have to get married. Women should be supported in becoming a human being first, and a wife second, if at all. Our value as members of society should not hinge on if we can marry or not.

Then, we should be allowed to dress however we want, without fear that we will get unwanted attention because of how we dress.

Let’s look at it this way –

It is not the fault of the homeowner if her house gets robbed. The fact that the door didn’t have fourteen latches on it and a home alarm doesn’t matter. It is the fault of the robber, who went to her home with the intent to break in.

The only problem is that women are encouraged to carefully landscape their yards for “curb appeal” – or “curve appeal” if you will. We are encouraged to make our houses – our bodies – look attractive and appealing. We are taught to be like the bower birds, who build a nest to attract a mate. The one with the most attractive nest gets a mate – and thus gets to pass on his genetics.

But if we are too attractive – we get attacked. So it is our fault. We can’t win.

Time to stop playing the game.

Gender violence and gender harmony

Posted on June 4, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

This is about gender violence, specifically it is about violence against women performed by men. Yes I know that there are women who attack men. Yes, there are women who attack women, and men who attack men. This is not about that.

This is about the fact that there are way more women who are being attacked by men just because they are women. Just because they are seen as lesser. I speak about what I know. You always have to write from what you know and what you experience.

Simply being a woman is seen as lesser. We are seen as the weaker sex. We are not encouraged to do anything that is rough-and-tumble. We are not encouraged to do anything outside of our proscribed gender roles. When a woman does anything that is seen as traditionally masculine she is seen as is as butch. When a man does anything that is seen as feminine he is seen as effeminate and is considered to be weaker.

This is a shame. It is not fair for men to not be allowed to be who they are. It is not fair for women to not be allowed to be who they are. There is nothing specific about our genders that make us better able to wash dishes or better able to pay bills. There is nothing specific about our genders that make it logical that one is supposed to be nurturing and caring and the other one is supposed to be hard and aggressive.

Everyone can take care of the house and everyone can take care of the children. It is important that everyone knows everyone’s roles. The role has nothing to do with gender but with ability. And ability comes from education, not gender.

It is important that young boys learn how to cook and darn their own socks. It is important that women know how to balance a checkbook and how to do house and car repairs. It is important that everybody learns how to take care of themselves completely and fully.

If we only know half of our tasks that we are half people.

Perhaps this is why women and men think they have to get married. They think they have to have someone else to take care of them instead of being able to take care of themselves. Imagine how strong marriages would be if both people are independent and strong, so both together make something even stronger.

This is the source of healing. This is the source of peace. We have to stop being women and men. We have to start being people.

Suppressed pain – rethinking domestic assault.

Posted on June 4, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

When I slipped a disc in my back, I was in extreme pain for a while. Then I got used to it. When I went to the chiropractor the next day, he tested my blood pressure while I was sitting and when I was standing. It was not different, and it was supposed to be. He told me that was a sign of stress caused by the pain. I wasn’t hurting much, but I did feel a little weird. I now know that feeling was from suppressed pain.

I hear that if you are going to boil a live lobster, it is kindest to do it slowly. Put the lobster in the pot and raise the heat gradually until it just goes to sleep. This is less traumatic than putting it in a boiling pot.

Bad smells become normal after a while. Constant loud sounds do too. After a while you can get used to anything, even if it is dangerous for you.

I’ve been a lobster for a long time. I’ve been in pain for a long time. I’ve been around bad smells and loud noises for longer than is healthy. I’d gotten used to it.

I’m not talking about these things in the literal sense.

I have been the victim of a culture that puts women last. I have been the victim of a culture that tells me and every other woman that our value derives from how we look, how we act, and how we related to men. I have been a victim of abuse from family and boyfriends and strangers. People I thought I could trust have harmed me, with the full approval of a society that says if a woman is harmed, she must have done something to deserve it.

As if men can’t control themselves.
As if men are basically animals.

I didn’t even realize I had been raped by a boyfriend until recently. I thought it was my fault, a misunderstanding. We were dating, but we hadn’t had sex. We’d talked about it, but we hadn’t agreed to it. We were kissing each other and fooling around one minute, and then he had entered me the next.

I thought it was my fault. I shouldn’t have led him on. I shouldn’t have let the situation get that far advanced. Right? That is what I’ve been told by our society.

And now I know. Sex without the consent of both people is rape. Even if both people are dating. Even if both have had sex with each other before.

Every single time it must be clearly mutual, or it is rape.

And it isn’t the woman’s fault. That is the definition of codependency. Nobody is responsible for another person’s feelings or actions. They are. A woman didn’t “make” a man do anything. He chose to. This is true for rape and domestic assault.

If a boundary is violated – whether it is being smacked around or raped – it doesn’t matter who does it. It is still an attack, and it is still the fault of the person who did the attack. The victim is not ever to blame.

We have to change our mindsets. We have to start thinking of violence between people who are supposed to be in a loving relationship as simply the same as violence between strangers.

Approaching a dog – social conventions on physical space.

Posted on June 4, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

When you come across a dog, you don’t know whether it is going to bite you or not. So the safest thing to do is to crouch down and appear nonthreatening. You put out your hand, palm down, in the form of a fist. This way your fingers are not exposed. That way the dog can come up to you on its own terms and in its own time and decide if you are safe. It is up to the dog to determine whether you get to touch it or not.

The same is true of people. There are number of people, myself included, who have problems with physical space. I was abused as a child in multiple ways, and I only started learning about boundaries in my 40s.

Because of my past, I have problems with physically being around people. I am very uncomfortable with people coming up and randomly touching me. This is true even if it is someone I know very well, even if it is my husband. If he and I are alone together in the house he can still startle me with touch. If I have my back to him, such as when I’m doing the dishes or I am working at the computer, and he comes up to me to touches me or give me a hug, it frightens me. I have told him repeatedly to give me a warning because it because it makes me scared. He doesn’t quite seem to get it. It is foreign to him.

We have a family friend who has a young son who does not understand boundaries. He is like a bouncy puppy. He is a little overwhelming to me, and it turns out, to many others. As soon as I walk in the door at their house he opens his arms and walks into me for a hug. If we are walking outside, he will come up beside me and throw his arm around me. It is very startling. We haven’t been visiting with this family for very long, so there isn’t a history between him and me. Essentially, I haven’t given him permission to touch me.

He has very few friends his age, and has expressed difficulty making female friends. He is very socially backwards in many ways, and his parents have noticed this but are unaware what to do about it. His mother is very forward and direct like him. She does not seem to understand that not everyone is, so she does not know to teach her son how to “read” whether it is safe to be forward and direct with them.

I’m of course older than the middle-school girls this boy deals with, and even I didn’t know why I feel so uncomfortable around him. If I don’t know, then they certainly don’t know. I can suppress my feelings for the sake of not embarrassing him, but they don’t hold their punches. He’s becoming more and more socially backwards.

It was so uncomfortable that for a while my husband and I considered only visiting with them when he was not there. We have finally realized that God has put this child in our path for a reason, and that we are to be like surrogate parents to him. I still don’t know what to say, or how to say it, but I’m trusting that the Holy Spirit will give me the words, as Jesus promised his disciples.

I really don’t want to embarrass him by telling him how uncomfortable his behavior is to me and many other people. But I do feel that he wants to get along, and wants to know how to “play” the social game. It has rules that sometimes aren’t easy to learn.

One thing I learned when I was working with college students with learning disabilities was that sometimes dyslexia isn’t just about words. Some students with LD have a problem “reading” people and feelings as well. The social rules that we all take for granted are very hard for them as they don’t pick up on nuances at all. They become further and further isolated from the rest of their peers because of this.

I don’t want him to feel isolated, because that is a recipe for another school shooter.

Poem – homeless, helpless?

Posted on June 3, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

Is being homeless a bad thing?
Like night, like winter
Perhaps it is a phase
A pause.

And then what if we got homes
For all the homeless,
what then?
Do we tackle
drug abuse,
prostitution,
morbid obesity?

How many different ways
can we harm ourselves?

Jesus says that the poor
will always be with us.
But he also says that
whatever
we do to the least of these
we do to Him.

So what do we do?
Do we help?
And if so, how?

Is helping really helping
or is it weakening?
If you carry someone
then they don’t learn how to walk
On their own.

On the way to new church

Posted on June 2, 2014 by betsybeadhead | Leave a comment

I was on my way to new church last Sunday. It isn’t a place, it is the people. It is a group of friends have gotten together to celebrate Communion. We sing hymns, we read Bible verses, we have Communion together, and then we have a potluck afterwards and a walk. This is the second gathering, and it is going well.

But on the way, I started thinking about the old church that I belonged to. I started thinking about how hurt I was when it seemed that very few people noticed when I left. I had been there for many years and I left suddenly, with no warning. Whether they knew the story of why I left or they didn’t know the story doesn’t matter. If they were told the story that the minister was telling them then it really would sound like I needed to be checked up on. She was telling them that I was having some family problems.

Five people checked up on me. Most of the ones who did just wanted me to come back, and didn’t listen to why I left. Some thought I could fix the church’s problems from within. One listened well, and understood that being a deacon isn’t what I was being called to. I never thought I was. It is interesting that going through the deacon discernment process just put my church experience on high boil.

I gave three years of my life to that church. I was there every single Sunday. I served almost every Sunday. My name was in the bulletin nearly every week. It is like none of that happened, by the silence I got from the members of a church that prides itself on being welcoming.

I felt betrayed then and I still feel betrayed now. I don’t know whether I can trust a church again.

I didn’t want to be thinking about these things on my way to my new church, to this new gathering with friends. We’re creating a new idea of how to do church. I don’t want to feel anger about my old church but it’s teaching me a lesson.

It’s teaching me to be mindful, because people are what make up a church, and people aren’t nice and friendly all the time. And people will hurt you.

So how do you sit with that feeling when you are hurt? Do you stay? Do you go?

Nadia Bolz-Weber in her book “Pastrix” talked about this and it’s something I need to think about. She would always tell new members of her church, who were bubbling over with excitement about finally having found a really open church, that things are great now, but that will change. People will get on your nerves. Things will get awkward. This feeling that you have right now won’t always stay. But you should stay, even when that feeling goes.

It’s great to stay when it’s all good. But Jesus tells us we are to love our enemies. It is easy to love our friends. Anybody can do that. But what about the enemies? That is where it gets real.

Therefore it is also easy to love the easy times. That is important to be mindful of. If all I’m in for is the easy times and the good friends then I am not really there completely.

Jesus tells us to be with the homeless and with the broken – and we need to be with the homeless and broken parts of ourselves and with each other too. Even if we have homes, even if we are healed, we’re still broken because we’re human. We will fail ourselves, and each other. That is just part of the package deal that comes with being human. But staying – that is the hard part. Jesus calls us to stay, and he tells us that he is always with us, to the end of the age.

So for Jesus, I’ll do it. I’ll try. I’ll try to stay when it gets hard.

I’m not sure how I’ll do. When I look at my address list, I see a lot of names of people that I’ve written off, people that have harmed me with no apologies. I’ve been working on my boundaries, but while doing that I need to make sure I’m building some bridges as well as walls.

So I’m glad for those feelings I had on the way to this new church community. I’m glad that I took the time to feel out these feelings and listen to them. And I’m continuing to invite Jesus into these broken parts of myself, to heal them.